Can you really make money from blogs?

I just reviewed this short but provocative article below in another blog.

It really defies all the hype about people trying to make money by having their own blog and linking it to Adsense, then contributing into other people's blogs and linking their blog to them, and driving traffic altogether to their blog using Google Adwords.

Maybe we should really think hard about this.

Is there really money to be made from blogs? Or should we just use the blogs as our own space and take whatever may come out of it.

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How would you like it if, every time you got a phone call, you had to listen to an advertisement as well? Have you ever asked, How do I make money with my telephone? Or, What's the business model of my telephone? Or, What's the business model of my water cooler? My front porch? My patio?

Doc Searls believes it's far more important (and interesting) to make money because of our blogs, rather than with them; just as we make money because we have phones rather than with our phones.

There are exceptions. Some of us make money by selling on the phone. If that's you, think about what trying to sell over your blog (instead of the phone) would do to your relationships with readers.

Of course, lots of people use advertising to defray the costs of blogging. But how interesting is that, once you're past describing whatever it takes to get going with Adsense or Blogads?

On the plus side, blogging and can bring high rates of return in authority and respect -- just starting with Google juice. In that context alone, blogging is at worst a small expense and at best a high-return investment. Advertising is gravy.

How can we make the most the innate value of blogging as an activity, rather than as a medium?